George H. Sullivan, author of Not Built in a Day: Exploring the Architecture of Rome and a regular lecturer at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC

Almost everyone who visits Rome visits the Piazza del Campidoglio, atop the Capitoline Hill beside the ancient Roman Forum. Most of those visitors know that the Campidoglio was designed in the 1500s by none other than Michelangelo, painter of the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the greatest sculptor of his era. What many visitors don’t know is that Michelangelo was also one of the greatest architects who ever lived, and that the Campidoglio is one of the greatest pieces of European architecture ever constructed. Its complex design rejected the High Renaissance precedent and set architecture down a new path; its revolutionary details included features that had never been seen before in the history of architecture. George Sullivan’s extensively illustrated lecture analyzes the Campidoglio in detail, exploring its architectural concepts and explaining its revolutionary place in architectural history.

This toe-tapping musical tribute to Fred Astaire features the beloved classic songs that Astaire introduced in his famous hit Broadway and Hollywood musicals. Written by America's best composers such as George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and Jerome Kern, this performance will include Astaire favorites such as “Cheek to Cheek”, “Night and Day”, “Top Hat”, “Fascinating Rhythm”, “Let's Call the Whole Thing Off”, and “A Fine Romance”, all performed in Frederick Hodges' tuneful, vibrant, and virtuosic piano style. Join us and enjoy Astaire’s works by one of the best concert pianists in the world.

Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) was a gifted architect and innovative artist whose beautiful and simple designs are loved all over the world. He was and remains an influential figure; the Mackintosh name is synonymous with the emphatic geometries of modern design. This is the first exhibition in the U.S. to feature the architect/designer’s innovative work and explore the larger circle of artists and craftspeople with whom he collaborated. Featuring furniture, posters, textiles, architectural drawings, books and ceramics, the exhibition highlights the process of making, the international influences and impact of the Glasgow style, and the Glasgow School of Art’s support and encouragement of women artists. Approximately 165 works, drawn from Glasgow’s most important collections, will be on display.

ASG is offering four opportunities to take this tour: October 9 at 1:30pm or 2:30pm and October 30 at 1:30pm or 2:30pm. Each tour is limited to a maximum of 12 participants.

We Conduct, a Documentary Film About Marin Alsop Dr. Bernadette Wegenstein, professor of media study & documentary filmmaker, The Johns Hopkins University

Dr. Bernadette Wegenstein is the director and creative force behind We Conduct, a documentary film about women orchestral conductors and their incredible dedication, devotion, mentorship and love for music itself, highlighting the camaraderie and mentorship between generations of female conductors and musicians. With a particular focus on Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (and lead positions in Sao Paulo and Vienna) - the first woman to conduct a major American orchestra - the film shows her power in pursuing a field not historically welcome to women and follows her career development and her mentorship of emerging conductors Jonathan Rush and Sumaya Elkashif. The presentation will include 20 minutes of edited scenes including concerts with maestra Alsop in Vienna, Sao Paulo, London and Baltimore. We will get a peek into the filmmaking process from pre- to post- production, with an emphasis on film editing (this film is still in the editing process and will be released in 2020). Our speaker will also address the following questions: How did she decide to tell the story of Marin Alsop? What challenges were encountered? What are the highlights of the process?

Between 1909 and 1929 a Russian man who could neither dance nor choreograph nor teach ballet changed the course of classical ballet: the man is Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929), the founder of the Ballets Russes. Widely regarded as the most influential ballet company in the 20th century, and in a span of only twenty years, Diaghilev promoted ground-breaking collaborations between young choreographers, composers and artists. Diaghilev brought together composers including Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, and Sergei Prokofiev; and artists like Pablo Picasso, Leon Bakst, Vasily Kandinsky, and Henri Matisse to work with nascent choreographers such as Leonide Massine, Vaslav Nijinsky, and George Balanchine. These new works radically departed from the 19th century classical ballets of his homeland. Works such as Sacre du Printemps (Nijinsky/Stravinsky) caused sensational reactions and disruption (and, it is said, near riots) at its Paris premiere in 1913.

This conversation with award-winning choreographer Diane Coburn Bruning will bring together the sights and sounds of this fertile period of ballet to help us understand how truly brilliant and visionary Diaghilev and his Ballet were in changing the course of ballet forever.

Folk Elements in 20th & 21st Century Classical MusicJudah Adashi, composer and composition faculty at Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University

How has folk music influenced and informed the work of Western classical composers? Dr Adashi will outline prominent examples of this phenomenon among 20th century European composers - from Béla Bartók to Benjamin Britten and Luciano Berio - before turning to 21st century artists, including American composers Jessie Montgomery and Caroline Shaw. $15 door fee for guests and subscribers

African Art through the Ages - Part 1 of 4: Ancient Africa (Prehistory to 1000 CE)Kevin Tervala, associate curator of African art at the Baltimore Museum of Art

Series overview: Africa is home to some of the world’s most dynamic and visually striking art works. From the vibrant paintings found in Stone Age caves to the abstract sculptures produced during the continent’s colonial period, the arts of Africa have been shaped by unique creative insight as well as by specific political, social, religious, and economic forces. This series provides an introduction to African artistic expression and explores how the continent’s unique historical trajectory has influenced the form and the spirit of its artistry. African Art through the Ages explores the history of African art in four, one-hour lectures and is meant to inspire participants’ continued interest in both the art and the people found on the world’s second largest land mass.

In this first lecture of the series, Ancient Africa (Prehistory to 1000 CE), Kevin Tervala will focus on the trajectory from cave paintings to the pyramids and explore how artistic creativity evolved in the cradle of humanity.

Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) was a gifted architect and innovative artist whose beautiful and simple designs are loved all over the world. He was and remains an influential figure; the Mackintosh name is synonymous with the emphatic geometries of modern design. This is the first exhibition in the U.S. to feature the architect/designer’s innovative work and explore the larger circle of artists and craftspeople with whom he collaborated. Featuring furniture, posters, textiles, architectural drawings, books and ceramics, the exhibition highlights the process of making, the international influences and impact of the Glasgow style, and the Glasgow School of Art’s support and encouragement of women artists. Approximately 165 works, drawn from Glasgow’s most important collections, will be on display.

ASG is offering four opportunities to take this tour: October 9 at 1:30pm or 2:30pm and October 30 at 1:30pm or 2:30pm. Each tour is limited to a maximum of 12 participants.

African Art through the Ages - Part 2 of 4: Medieval Africa (1000 CE to 1500 CE)Kevin Tervala, associate curator of African art at the Baltimore Museum of Art

The second lecture of the series by Kevin Tervala, Medieval Africa (1000 CE to 1500 CE), will examine the art produced during the continent’s Age of Empires and look at the role of Islam in shaping African creative thought.

The Fragmented Image: From Seurat to Chuck CloseJoseph Cassar, professor of art, University of Maryland University College and the New York Times Knowledge Network

The term Pointillism was first used by art critics in 1886 to ridicule works of art by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, but today it is an actual art historical term of how these artists developed a technique branching from Impressionism. The technique relies on the ability of the eye and mind of the viewer to blend the color spots into a range of tones which bring out the totality of the painting. This artistic development did not have many followers because of its slow and fastidious method of precision working with small exacting brush marks, however, it was embraced at some point by many artists including the Cubists, Matisse, and contemporary artists such as Chuck Close. This talk surveys the development of this technique and artistic movement.

Mary Louise Parker is returning to Broadway this fall to star in The Sound Inside, a two-character play about a professor with a difficult diagnosis and a creative writing student with a lot to say. The play, by Adam Rapp, was first staged last summer by the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts. Jesse Green, the co-chief theater critic for The New York Times, called the 90-minute, two-character drama “astonishing” and praised Ms. Parker for “a sensationally controlled performance.” Ms. Parker, in an interview, called the show “probably the most daunting thing I’ve ever done,” and said she looked forward to continuing to develop her character through further rehearsals and performances. “I like that she’s an academic, and more of an intellectual, because I haven’t often gotten to enlist that part of myself,” she said. The Broadway production, like that at Williamstown, will be directed by David Cromer, who won a Tony Award last year for his direction of The Band’s Visit, and will feature Will Hochman, making his Broadway debut, as the student. Ms. Parker has appeared in seven previous Broadway plays, most recently starring in Heisenberg in 2016. She won a Tony Award in 2001 for Proof and was also nominated in 1990 for Prelude to a Kiss and in 2005 for Reckless. The producers are Jeffrey Richards, Lincoln Center Theater (which commissioned the play) and Rebecca Gold.

Members-only; please see full description for more details and RSVP via the Reply Form.

Since the late 1970s, Sophie Calle (French, b. 1953) has made provocative art about human vulnerabilities, desires, and eccentricities. Cross-pollinating photographs and text, she produces probing accounts of others’ lives, as well as confessional autobiographical vignettes. These visual stories elicit wonder and empathy, as if the pages of a diary were spilled out across a gallery wall. Despite her influential innovations in expanding the boundaries of contemporary art and her international acclaim, Calle has not had a retrospective in the United States. Hileman will provide an overview of Calle’s poignant work, discuss her stature as “an artist’s artist,” and address the lack of American institutional support for her humanistic and difficult-to-commodify work.

This lecturecoincides with the museum’s exhibition of the same name which opens Saturday, October 26, 2019. Elizabeth Catlett is regarded as one of the premier African American artists of the 20th century. The lecture will provide an overview of the exhibition and showcase her work which revolved around themes of social injustice, the human condition, historical figures, women, and the relationship between mother and child. According to Catlett, the main purpose of her work was to convey social messages rather than pure aesthetics. Many of the works display the Mexican influence since, after having traveled to Mexico early in the 1940s, she settled there, married a Mexican artist, Francisco Mora, raised a family, and taught at the local university. She became a Mexican citizen in 1962. Born and raised in Washington, DC, her subjects in prints and sculptures range from sensitive maternal images, to confrontational symbols of Black Power, to portraits of working class sharecroppers, to portraits of Frederick Douglass. During her lifetime, Catlett received many awards and recognitions, including membership in the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana, the Art Institute of Chicago Legends and Legacy Award, honorary doctorates from Pace University and Carnegie Mellon, and the International Sculpture Center's Lifetime Achievement Award in contemporary sculpture.

American history is woven into the soul of Montgomery, Alabama, a small city of 200,000 and the state capital. Alabama was one of the original seven confederate states, and Montgomery hosted the Confederacy’s founding at the 1861 Montgomery Convention, and then became the first capital of the Confederacy. About a century later, in 1955, Montgomery became the cradle of the modern Civil Rights Movement when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus. Montgomery is full of museums and monuments that reflect both of these histories. We will explore both aspects but our focus will be on America’s history of racial injustice and its legacy. A focal point of the trip will be the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, a museum built on the site of a former warehouse where slaves were imprisoned that displays the history of slavery and racism in America, revealing how the slavery system did not end but evolved from the family-shattering domestic slave trade to the decades of lynching terror, to the suffocating segregation of Jim Crow to the age of mass incarceration in which we now live. Then a short walk to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, an acclaimed six-acre collection of sculpture and commemorative architecture that commands attention to the more than 4,000 lynchings that occurred in 800 American counties from Reconstruction to 1950 during a long-term campaign of racist terror. Both sites are the inspiration of Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative. We will also visit the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Civil Rights Memorial Center designed by Maya Lin, and the Rosa Parks Museum; several Confederate monuments and historic sites; Riverwalk and Old Alabama Town; and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art. We anticipate an informative, enlightening 2-1/2 day trip. Our trip has been planned by Lenel Srochi Meyerhoff who is looking forward to her 3rd trip to Montgomery.

Members-only; A full Trip Description and Reply Form will be distributed in late August.

Why do Baltimore and London have row houses while Paris and Minneapolis do not? This question led Charlie Duff to explore a remarkable group of cities in four nations and to discover that they form an urban family, bound together by architecture, commerce, and politics, for more than 400 years. The story begins in Amsterdam in 1600 and covers Dutch, British, Irish and American cities that house more than 100 million people. It all starts with the row house as not only the key to understanding why many of the world’s great cities look and function as they do, but as perhaps the best model to avoid sprawl, urban decay and the worse catastrophes of global climate change.

Charlie’s book, The North Atlantic Cities, will be available for purchase and signing by the author. Note: Charlie gave ASG an early preview of this talk in 2017; his research and book now completed, this is a much-expanded lecture on a fascinating topic.

The Influences and Evolution of American Classic Jazz and Its Effects on Popular MusicBrian Holland (piano) world renowned, Grammy-nominated recording artist Danny Coots (drums) world renowned, Grammy-winning recording artist

This concert/lecture by Brian Holland and Danny Coots will demonstrate and explain the influences of early American music and culture on classic jazz styles and in turn show those ragtime and jazz influences on American popular music up to the present. This program not only describes how each period style is influenced and evolves into the next: Holland and Coots will also demonstrate the nuances and subtleties of these transitions. Holland and Coots are considered two of the foremost performers who specialize in improvisation within these styles. If you attended their performance in April at the Suburban Club, they will pick up where they left off and further develop this conversation with an all new program of music from the 1850's to the present. They have some special surprises in store since it's so close to the holidays!

ASG members will experience the art of Bill Viola at three venerated Philadelphia arts venues: The Fabric Workshop, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA), and the Barnes Foundation. Bill Viola (b.1951) is internationally recognized as one of the world’s leading contemporary artists; his work has enthralled viewers for over 40 years. Viola’s pioneering use of video, sound, and new media have greatly contributed to an expansion of the field, paving the way for new generations of artists working in electronic media. Viola’s work communicates transcendental ideas about the human experience such as birth, consciousness, and death rooted in Eastern and Western spiritual traditions such as Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism. Our lunch (included in the trip price) will be in the Garden Pavilion at the Barnes.

Members-only; please see full description for more details and RSVP via the Reply Form.

The Place of the ViewerKerr Houston, professor of art history, theory and criticism, Maryland Institute College of Art

How does our physical position – the place in which we stand – matter as we look at a work of art? The question may initially sound trivial, but in fact it has long interested both artists and theorists, and close attention to the place of the viewer can illuminate the aims and effects of a range of works. Rooted in a recently published book, and drawing on a wide range of examples (from medieval sculpture to Italian Renaissance painting, and from Minimalist sculpture to contemporary installation art), this lecture will consider some of the many ways in which the place of the viewer has played an active role in the production of artistic meaning.

Japanese Cinema, Yesterday and TodayShoplifters (2018) 121 minutes by Hirokazu Kore-edaIntroduction and commentary by Linda DeLibero, director, Program in Film & Media Studies, Johns Hopkins University

Shoplifters - In this beautifully observed tale, a family of petty thieves living on the margins of contemporary Tokyo takes in an abandoned child. What ensues over the following year is by turns wryly funny and deeply moving, a chronicle of human connection, love and loss.

Hidden Fortress - the film from which George Lucas liberally stole his plot for Star Wars, this tale of adventure and derring-do follows a princess in disguise as she strives to regain her throne, helped by a powerful general-in-exile and two comic sidekicks.

Japanese Cinema, Yesterday and TodayUgetsu monogatari (1953) 96 minutes by Kenji MizoguchiIntroduction and commentary by Linda DeLibero, director, Program in Film & Media Studies, Johns Hopkins University

Ugetsu monogatari - Based on author Ueda Akinari’s collection of nine supernatural tales of the Ming dynasty, Ugetsu monogatari (or “Tales of Ugetsu”) tells the story of a man who abandons his wife and son for a female ghost, enduring tragedy as he discovers the wages of supernatural sin.

Late Spring- A father and widower, concerned about his twentysomething daughter’s ostensibly dwindling marriage prospects, works to ensure that she find a partner, despite what losing her presence at home would mean to his own life. A perfect example of Ozu’s masterfully understated craft, Late Spring is as lovely as it is bittersweet. (with Chris Reed)

Some Thoughts on the Development of Aquatint in 18th-Century EuropeRena Hoisington, curator and head of the department of old master prints at the National Gallery of Art

Invented in the Netherlands in the 1650s, aquatint was not employed broadly by artists in Europe until the second half of the eighteenth century. The increasing use of this tonal intaglio printmaking technique at this time corresponds with a growing interest in studying, collecting, and multiplying drawings. By supplementing the line work of etching with a means to render tone in subtle ways, aquatint offered a new and exciting method to replicate ink and wash drawings, especially when these works were printed in brown ink. Early practitioners of the medium included Jean-Baptiste Le Prince in France, Paul Sandby in England, Giovanni David in Italy, and Francisco de Goya in Spain. This talk offers an overview on the beginnings of aquatint, the subject of a forthcoming exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

ASG is pleased to offer members a trip to the newly expanded Glenstone, Mitchell and Emily Rales’ private museum in Potomac, Maryland which reopened last fall unveiling the new Pavilions (adding 204,000 square feet of gallery space) and a redesigned campus. Glenstone seamlessly integrates art, architecture, and landscape into a serene and contemplative environment creating a temple of art that works to slow down visitors. The collection comprises iconic examples of modern and contemporary art that represent pivotal shifts in the perception and understanding of the art of our time. The architecture is essential, providing a minimal design to complement the collection and experience of viewing art. Glenstone offers nearly 300 acres of landscape which is fully integrated with the architecture and art. The landscape includes paths, trails, streams, meadows, forests and outdoor sculptures throughout the grounds. Visiting Glenstone is an unhurried, uncrowded experience with art, architecture and landscape: a quiet realm of serenity, beauty, and peacefulness.

Members-only; please see full description for more details and RSVP via the Reply Form.

Across the African continent, men and women have built monumental and aesthetically innovative structures from mud and earthen material. In large kingdoms and small-scale societies, these buildings were used not just as dwellings or gathering spaces, but as ways for the people to express fundamental social, cultural, and religious beliefs. This lecture draws on the architectural expression of states and societies in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Togo and explores how people used the buildings to express themselves. Through this lecture, Tervala will also track how the entrance of Islam in the 7th century restructured the social and architecture fabric of these western African societies and cultures.

Nestled along the South Platte River, the Mile High City has been a focal point for the Rocky Mountain Region since the first gold miners made a claim and established the city in the mid-19th century. But the last decade has seen more change and growth than imagined, with Denver attracting 100,000 new residents. These sharply changing demographics, and the city’s unique history as a gateway to the West, have contributed to the quickly-evolving and diverse fine and performing arts scene. Join ASG on a tour of the highlights of Denver’s museum and cultural districts, along with the best restaurants (served with a side of mountain views). The trip will include tours of four museums (Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver Art Museum, Clyfford Still Museum and Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Arts) and a guided architecture tour designed especially for Art Seminar Group. We will also visit the legendary Air Force Academy outside of Colorado Springs, a modernist campus resonating with pride and symbolism via a radical midcentury design whose master plan was developed in the 1950’s by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. We will stay at the historic Brown Palace Hotel in downtown Denver.

Members-only; please see full description for more details and RSVP via the Reply Form.

Stephanie Ybarra brings vast experience with theaters from across the country, most recently at The Public Theater in New York, to her new role as artistic director of Baltimore Center Stage which she joined just last fall. Stephanie is the most recent addition to Baltimore’s cultural community and another example of our city’s ability to attract outstanding artistic talent. She has programmed BCS’s upcoming season for 2019-2020 and will use that program to discuss how the American theater is evolving and the way Baltimore Center Stage is positioned to lead the field not only in what it produces, but also how it is produced.

Revisiting The Renaissance: The Key Ingredients of a Cultural Transformation, 1400-1600, Part 5: The Creation of an Ideal and its Aftermath: Classicism and Counter-ClassicismAneta Georgievska-Shine, professor of art history, University of Maryland

2019 is the centenary of the founding of the Bauhaus school in Weimar, Germany, founded by architect Walter Gropius. In operation for only 14 years before being shut down by the National Socialist Party, as part of the Nazi regime, it has become the most influential art and design school in history. This talk explores the origins and impact of Bauhaus fonts, books, ads, and exhibitions, which shook the world of graphic design and shaped the dynamic, multimedia design practices of today. Ellen will offer a sneak preview of her upcoming exhibition about Bauhaus master Herbert Bayer, opening at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in the fall of 2019. $15 door fee for guests and subscribers

Holland/Coots will present a performance and lecture on early American jazz from pre-ragtime influences, both ethnic and social, to the present day performance practice of referencing classic jazz styles. The program not only describes how each period style is influenced and evolves into the next, but Holland and Coots demonstrate the nuances and subtleties of these transitions. Holland/Coots are considered two of the foremost performers who specialize in improvisation within these styles. They are able to effectively and genially demonstrate the communication necessary between musicians to provide a seamless and entertaining performance.

This lecture examines artists working in the 21st century who use strategies more familiar to the field of speculative fiction than to the visual arts. Such strategies include world building around themes such as the supernatural, magic, human-animal hybridity, and the extraterrestrial. Artists including ruby onyinyechi amanze, Amy Cutler, Fay Ku, and Wangechi Mutu respond to what some cultural theorists have described as the current situation of being post-human and post-nature. Moving beyond anthropocentric paradigms that privilege the human experience, we will discuss artists who create fantastical, sci-fi leaning narratives to picture the ways in which the fate of humans is inextricably tied to the animals, plants, and other non-human critters that co-populate our world. At least partially in response to the growing urgency of climate change, artists discussed here use a variety of media—collage, drawing, printmaking, painting—to explore the ways in which we might begin to understand humans as part of a larger, non-hierarchical network of inter-species relationships.

Monsters & Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940sOliver Shell, associate curator of European art, The Baltimore Museum of Art

Curator Oliver Shell will give a talk and exhibition tour on the BMA’s current exhibit “Monsters & Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s”.Nearly 90 Surrealist masterworks of the 1930s and 1940s by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst and André Masson are presented through a timely lens—that of war, violence, and exile. Despite the political and personal turmoil brought on by the Spanish Civil War and World War II, avant-garde artists in Europe and those who sought refuge in the United States pushed themselves to create some of the most potent and striking images of the Surrealist movement. Monstrosities in the real world bred monsters in paintings and sculpture, on film, and in the pages of journals and artists’ books, resulting in a period of extraordinary creativity.

A weekend of theatrical immersion in Washington, D.C. with Murray Biggs, special lecturer for Yale Educational Travel, Yale University spanning 2 nights. We will see three plays over the weekend accompanied by professor Biggs who will also lead illuminating discussions of each play. ASG has accommodations in place for members at the Dupont Circle hotel.

Murray Biggs, semi-retired adjunct associate professor of English, theater studies, and most recently film at Yale, is known throughout the campus, and with alumni everywhere, for his dynamic teaching style that inspires great enthusiasm and active participation. He has led renowned week-long and weekend theater seminars throughout the U.S., Canada, and the UK. Several ASG members have traveled with Murray and recommend him very highly.

Members-only; a full description and Reply Form will be distributed to members in January.

German Expressionism And Degenerate Art, Part 1 David Gariff, senior lecturer at the National Gallery of Art

Germany around 1900 was a volatile contradiction - modernizing rapidly yet deeply conservative in its values. This was fertile ground for the birth of German expressionism represented by the paintings and sculptures of Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc, Otto Müller, Emil Nolde, and others. With the rise of national socialism in the 1930s in Germany, many of these avant-garde artists and the movements of which they were a part came to be labeled “degenerate.” David Gariff explores the nature of German expressionist art against the backdrop of two important exhibitions mounted by the Nazis in 1937: The Great German Art Exhibition, on July 18, and the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition, on July 19. Through these two exhibitions and their related documents and propaganda, the Nazis sought to establish and support the reputation of the approved art of the Third Reich, while at the same time to unleash a destructive “tornado” (as Hitler referred to it) against modern art.

Vanessa Hoheb grew up spending time in her father’s sculpture studio. At age 16, she began her formal apprenticeship in the studio, learning the skills and techniques of sculptural enlarging, mold making, casting, and restoration. The early years in the studio were filled with the excitement of working for artists Willem DeKooning, Louise Nevelson, Isamu Noguchi, Frederick Hart, and Jasper Johns. Hoheb became a widely-recognized master artisan in these techniques. Between 1980 and 1984, Willem DeKooning, one of America’s most influential artists and a leader of the 20th century Abstract Expressionist movement, engaged Hoheb Studios in New York to enlarge three of his hand-sized sculptures to monumental size. So, how is a palm-sized clay sculpture turned into a monumental bronze artwork? The speaker will provide an in-depth presentation on the creative and technical processes used in the development of these important works while offering an eyewitness’s glimpse into who deKooning was as an artist and person.

Surrealism and the Anxieties of the 20th CenturyJoseph Cassar, professor of art, University of Maryland University College and the New York Times Knowledge Network

Sigmund Freud’s publication in 1900 “On the Interpretation of Dreams” regarded dreams as the serious business of our lives. The Surrealist movement develops in the early 1920s with art that disquiets the viewer, sabotaging the existing order of things, relating theories of psychology to the idea of creativity and the production of art. The dream became equivalent to imagination itself. This seminar explores the origins of surrealism, the surrealist manifesto by Andre Breton, its widespread influence and the art of some of its most prominent members such as Max Ernst, Jean Arp, Joan Miro, Andre Masson, Rene Magritte, Alberto Giacometti, Salvador Dali, and others.

Modern Sculpture In The National Gallery of ArtDavid Gariff, senior lecturer at the National Gallery of Art

The East Building of the National Gallery of Art houses an impressive collection of modern sculptures displayed throughout its many levels. Henry Moore’s Knife Edge Mirror Two Piece, Anthony Caro’s National Gallery Ledge Piece, and the enormous mobile, Untitled, by Alexander Calder were commissioned for the opening of the building in 1978 and are prominently displayed at the entrance and in the atrium. Other large-scale works by Max Ernst, Andy Goldsworthy, Isamu Noguchi, Richard Serra, and David Smith are also found in the atrium. Throughout the upstairs galleries, one can trace the history of 20th-century sculpture in parallel with the history of 20th-century painting. David Gariff leads a tour of the Gallery’s modern sculptures through this lecture.

Revisiting The Renaissance: The Key Ingredients of a Cultural Transformation, 1400-1600, Part 4: From the Sacred to the Secular: The Role of PatronsAneta Georgievska-Shine, professor of art history, University of Maryland

See series description on January 23 for more information.

$15 door fee for guests and subscribers

Originally Scheduled for 2/20, this lecture was rescheduled due to inclement weather.

Salman’s final lecture of the series: My Soul Has Grown Deep Like the Rivers is devoted to the black pioneers of abstract art: Norman Lewis, Alma Thomas, Sam Gilliam and Jack Whitten among them; and abstract sculptors like David Hammons, Mel Edwards, and Martin Puryear.

Dr. Salcman is pleased to present a lecture series on the subject of contemporary art by African-American artists for Art Seminar Group. After a long period of significant neglect, African-American Art has become one of the most exciting curatorial areas in contemporary art, a vital source of expansion and revisionism of the historical canon and an important sector of today’s art market.

Part 1: A Dream Deferred

Part 2: I Am the Darker Brother

Part 3: My Soul Has Grown Deep Like the Rivers

In the first lecture of the series, A Dream Deferred, the historical context of work by African-American artists will be presented with brief discussions about the first well-known African-American artist, Joshua Johnson, a Marylander, and Henry Ossawa Tanner, as well as issues that have previously excluded or delayed proper recognition of African-American artists. We will explore the figurative work of artists in the 1950s and 1960s and influenced by the Harlem Renaissance like Horace Pippin, Jacob Lawrence, and Romare Bearden.

Revisiting The Renaissance: The Key Ingredients of a Cultural Transformation, 1400-1600, Part 5: The Creation of an Ideal and its Aftermath: Classicism and Counter-Classicismwith Aneta Georgievska-Shine, originally scheduled for 2/27, is rescheduled for 3/27.